On-line shopping programs have been developed by numerous wholesalers (‘Business to Business’ services) and retailers (‘Business to Consumer’ services). A percentage of these sellers are seeking to provide themselves a presence on the World Wide Web in addition to a traditional physical store front in an attempt to attract a wider, and perhaps different, consumer market. In recent years a new type of service provider has emerged that exists only as a presence on the World Wide Web to provide brokerage services between retailers and consumers.
The success of these service providers has been hampered by the relative newness of the concept among the mass of consumers, and often by the reliance on established courier companies for order fulfillment. Dependence upon traditional couriers (including the mail system), and lately upon third-party fulfillment warehouses catering to localized areas, but generally inconveniently located, is necessitated by the fact of the vast and undifferentiated fulfillment area characteristic of the World Wide Web. Long distance fulfillment by courier introduces lags on the order of days, and the time, and often the date, of product delivery are uncertain. Local deliveries tend to be subject to courier schedules, which are independent of the needs of the retailer and consumer.
Certain existing on-line business and technology models have been developed to cater to local markets, but these tend to depend on warehousing and hired drivers to source and deliver a narrowly defined product category; for example, groceries. Because of the narrowness of the product offering demanded by the warehousing constraint, the market area must be correspondingly broadened in hopes of obtaining trade volumes adequate to cover expenses, including expenses incurred by paid drivers. The broad market area incurs time lags and delivery is often scheduled, which although requiring planning on the part of the consumer, is preferable to the greater inconvenience of an uncertain delivery time.
Thus present models suffer from lengthy and uncertain delivery times, which increases the possibility of spoilage of perishable products and the likelihood of refusal or return of merchandise purchased on impulse, and hence discourages impulse shopping. The primary cause of unacceptable fulfillment times stems from too broad a market area, determined either by the characteristics of the World Wide Web itself or by the central warehousing of specialty items. Accordingly, none of the existing models describe an on-line shopping club that integrates extremely rapid fulfillment with on-line shopping convenience.
Consequently, there is a need in the art for an on-line, interactive purchasing environment providing a variety of psychologically attractive shopping experiences fully integrated with a rapid fulfillment strategy.
There is a further need in the art for an on-line, interactive purchasing environment with a broad product offering that is able to satisfy a larger proportion of a consumer's purchasing needs and that permits a reduction in its geographic market area in favor of rapid fulfillment by generating a proportionally greater amount of revenue.
There is a further need in the art for an on-line, interactive purchasing environment which permits its geographic market area to be broadened as desired by expanding on a cellular basis, whereby a member area serves a limited community within a radius of a selected geographic location, while a very large number of member areas can be served by the same on-line presence.
There is a further need in the art for an on-line, interactive purchasing environment in which self-employed, trained buyers perform fulfillment and earn their income solely from retailers, through volume discounts, and from consumers, through tariffs charged to the consumer based on product categories, delivery service fees and tips. The company brokering these purchases is not impacted by the cost of hiring delivery personnel or maintaining a fleet of vehicles.
Finally, there is yet a further need in the art for an on-line, interactive purchasing environment including a Geographic Information System to provide for the assignment of Buyer Members on the basis of their location, and to allow real-time, graphical observation of order fulfillment status by Consumer Members.